Beneath Her Skin by Gregg Olsen (ebook reader for manga txt) 📗

He nodded.

No, it wasn’t.

“But you need proof. Something more than a feeling,” he said.

Neither girl said so, but both knew that the answer to their father’s challenge rested back with Starla Larsen. She had been close to Katelyn and she had to know what Katelyn’s state of mind was at the time of her death. She’d also be the best bet for knowing the source of the taunts, but if she knew, she wasn’t talking. Indeed, she’d blown them off at the pink beanbag interrogation in her bedroom.

Just as the family was leaving, Kevin excused himself to talk to a pretty young woman with red hair who’d been sipping wine of the same hue all night at another table.

“A fan,” he said, exchanging looks with Valerie. “Give me a minute.”

Valerie and the girls headed out the door. As they crossed the parking lot, Taylor caught a glimpse of her dad and the woman through the restaurant’s window.

Kevin was animated, but not in a happy way. He was moving his hands to make a point. Even from that distance, Taylor could see the vein that popped in his temple whenever he was angry. It looked like he was scolding the young woman. She didn’t seem the least bit put off by whatever he was saying.

When he returned to the car, he had a worried look on his face.

“What was that about, Dad?” Taylor asked.

Kevin exhaled—a sure sign that he was angry—and turned the key to start the car.

“Nothing,” he said.

“You look really upset,” Taylor said.

“People always expect you to give them a free book, and when you don’t, they get mad,” he said.

Valerie exchanged a quick look with Kevin and turned on the car radio, a not-so-subtle signal that the conversation was over.

From their places in the backseat, Hayley turned to Taylor, pointed to her phone and started to text.

Hayley: who was dad talking 2?

Taylor: that wz no fan. 2 young 4 dad’s bks. Wndr wat pissed him off so much?

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The words churned in her head as Taylor lay in her bed staring into the darkness of her tiny bedroom. She knew that whatever she and her sister had hoped to find in the letters that came to her underwater was still there to be unscrambled. The letters by themselves were absolutely correct. It was the order that was all wrong. Maybe they’d tried too hard to make sense of them? Some things were better if they didn’t push so hard.

If there was a Laura Folk, for example, she surely never lived in Port Gamble.

“Hayley,” she whispered into the hole in the wall. “You awake?”

No answer.

“Are you up?”

Hayley murmured something about needing to get some sleep. “Big test tomorrow,” she mumbled.

“Going to get the Scrabble.”

“Why can’t you just use an app?”

Taylor allowed a slight smile. Her sister was off in slumberland if she thought that even for a minute. “Doesn’t work like that. Go back to sleep.”

“All right. Good night.”

Taylor grabbed her favorite fuzzy yellow robe, stuck her feet into her fleece-lined slippers and padded down the hall. She could hear her dad snoring and the insufferable wall clock ticking. It was after 1:00 a.m. Even though they were twins, Taylor didn’t require as much sleep as her sister. She was a night owl. The darkness, the calming quiet, the sense of being alone resonated in her soul in a way that even Hayley didn’t understand. From the base of the staircase, she looked out the front door window at the bay.

The water was still, glassy and very sad.

Taylor conjured up some memories of Katelyn and the last time she had seen her. They were riding the bus home the Friday before the holiday break. Katelyn sat in the front, her head leaning against the fogged-up window. In the din of the kids yammering about their holiday plans, Taylor remembered how she had tried to say hello to Katelyn but the other kids pushed her past her seat. They had locked eyes for only a second and Katelyn managed a smile.

A sad smile, Taylor remembered just then, though she wondered if her memory had been tainted by what happened on Christmas night. Her father told her that nothing turns a victim into a saint faster than their untimely and unexpected demise. After a crime took place, good and evil were always rendered in bold strokes.

She pulled the old, battered Scrabble game from the shelf and sat on the floor. The embers from the fire glowed eerily, and the warmth felt good. She quietly fished out the letters and arranged them on the carpet.

LEWD HOT ROD KOALA FURL SELF IVORY

Taylor clamped down her eyelids to shut out the ideas that she’d had about what words could be formed with the Scrabble tiles and what words she believed Katelyn might have wanted her to grasp. She and her sister didn’t consider that they actually spoke to the dead—they merely felt that they could read an imprint of a moment left behind by those who crossed over. Although it was tougher to do, they could sometimes gauge the thoughts and feelings of those who were still among the living. The living were always tougher than the dead. She and her sister didn’t know why for sure, but they agreed that perhaps it was because the breathing still had reason for lies and subterfuge. The dead, well, they just didn’t have anything left to lose.

When Taylor opened her eyes, she found herself drawn to the word SELF. It was as if there was a pulsating energy in the word. The others, not so much. Next, she pushed all the words together and ran her hand across their smooth surfaces, mixing them without rolling them over.

“Talk to me, Katie,” she said softly. “Tell me.”

The Word YOUR pulsed from the mix. She studied the letter tiles spelling out YOURSELF.

Taylor closed her eyes again, and without any consideration for what she was doing, she smoothed out the tiles.

Her eyes popped